It's a tough call because the publishing world is pretty closed, cold and hard to would-be novelists. Yet the old mantra that self-publishing is really for losers seems to be being challenged in the Internet age. It's a condundrum.

W

Zephyr -- a superhero webcomic in prose
http://zephyr.warrenhately.com

I do wonder, though, as I commented under another snowblog post, if a lot of this is due to the initial excitement of the Kindle buyer, who thinks to themselves, 'Must download everything that's free!', then, 'Must Download everything that's *almost* free!'

In addition, a lot of folks will more readily take a chance on a 70p download anyway.

So, there's good marketing potential here for self-published writers, good and bad - the market's wide open right now.

I'll bet these factors were found in first-time-ipod buyers back in the day too. But what about now, when the ipod is a more common piece of tech? Do we still have folks panic-downloading 70p albums from bands they hadn't previously heard of?

Once the kindle becomes more common tech, I'll bet the market will settle itself and self-published works will become less common, or at least less popular amongst readers.

But who knows? Every Society of Authors mag I've read recently has contained several articles on e-books. It's the new thing to panic about in publishing...

I think there's probably two kinds of self-published book; one by either a writer already established in some way and those published by people who just fancied giving writing a go. In general I like the idea that someone out there has approved it but then not everything that's traditionally published is any good anyway.

Having read a few hard copy self-published books in the past, I'm wary of picking up them up now unless they're from someone with previous form.

As Wayne says it's still a novelty, and when it's only 99c, or free, Kindle owners are willing to take a punt on unedited self-pubbed ebooks. But the negative reviews are building up, and I think readers will become more descerning with time. There are new e-publishers starting up, who offer a free proofreading service, who will probably get a big chunk of the ebook business in time.

Hi, I'm all for edited, proofed texts - online and in print, and regardless of price. Trouble is with the 'gatekeepers' (publishers and agents) and particularly in the UK, is that said 'gatekeepers' are drawn from a very narrow demographic. I think many writers (albeit a minority)who publish their work online choose to do so by way of avoiding a dubious selection process based on a narrow, and often irrelevant, definition of taste. If the so-called 'gatekeepers' were as clever as they are encouraged to believe they are then there would be no 'crisis' or 'panic' in the publishing industry. Regards.

There's no denying that agents and publishers act as gatekeepers sorting "the wheat from the chaff"; and while it may be true, as Sterling claims, that readers don't care, the fact remains that publishers' reputations would suffer catastrophically if they published "unpublishable" books.
I think it's great that people are getting their stuff out on Kindle, and if they make a few bob doing it, so much the better. However, there's a difference between a novel that isn't quite right for a particular publisher, and a novel by someone who simply can't write.
I agree with Roxanne Gay when she says that some novels are rejected for a reason.

But are publishers good gatekeepers? I think one of the frustrations unpublished authors have is that they actually see lots of terrible books published by mainstream gatekeepers and think that their own efforts aren't that bad in comparison.

Matthew, you're into subjectivity there. Every book out there - including my own - receives a variety of reviews, good, bad and meh.

There are books which everyone else seems to love and rave about, which I find unengaging. And vice versa.

I think most commercial publishers publish what they think will sell, and what the market wants to read - and that may be what a lot of budding pro writers think to be inferior to their own work.

Personally, I've known a lot of writers to be unattentive to the market demands, perhaps even going out of their way to be different. And while there is a market for 'different', I think it's obvious that such is more limited and almost exclusively involves small press only.